Regarding "We won't recognize the planet we're on'" (Page A1, Sunday), climate doom-sayers present their theories as undisputed facts, though the interspersing of words such as "could," "believe" and "probably" clearly shows their perceived facts are little more than conjecture.

Count me as a skeptic in this doom and gloom climate scenario. One quote in the story concedes that the climate "has always changed, with ice ages, warmings and mass extinctions," yet these doom-sayers persist in blaming man and claiming things are irreversible.

If indeed it is true that "the Arctic and Greenland were ice-free 4 million years ago," and that "the Earth was 4 degrees warmer than it is now 14 million years ago," how is it that we endure all these millennia later? I am all for conserving and preserving our environment, but I think it is disingenuous to scare people with doom and gloom scenarios that are little more than guesswork.

The only way to save this world is to drastically reduce fossil fuel burning and consequent emissions. And the cheapest and best way to start that now is to cut back on population growth. A widespread public campaign to limit children to 1-2 per family is desperately needed worldwide. In the U.S., no financial support should be given for more than two children per family by the government, including discontinuing income tax deductions for larger numbers of children.

The article states that more than 40 percent of the Earth's land surface is covered by farms and cities. We have already run out of new land for farming, and we are cutting down the rain forests to make more farms to grow corn for ethanol for fuel. Food will be more scarce. Water is already stretched beyond its bounds in many places, including Texas.

It is time to admit that global warming is real, already ongoing and getting worse. It is certainly a fit subject for our local, state and federal governments to consider and attempt to ameliorate.

Future emissions will be increasingly determined by China, India and other more rapidly growing developing countries. The math is easy. Future economic growth of China and India is estimated to be 7-10 percent per year, nearly twice that of the U.S. and Europe. That means that in 10-15 years, growth in their economies will result in production and consumption of goods and services (GDP) equal that for the U.S. today.

Energy consumption of all kinds will be required to support such growth and result in massive emissions relative to any savings possible by the U.S. or Europe. We are not in control, they are. So why continue to penalize fossil fuel industries in our country when they can make so little difference?

China and India together have about eight times as many people as the U.S. They hope for better lives for their people. The average person in China earns about one-seventh of what we do and those in India one-sixteenth. Who are we, one of the wealthiest countries, to ask them to curtail their economic growth because we are concerned about global warming?

I don't have the answer to this dilemma, but a continuing attack on fossil fuel usage through the Department of Energy and EPA is not the answer either.

Dire futures projected in the article are being used to encourage actions today, but there is no clear vision of what can be done.